Is THIS the key to finally finding MH370? Scientists claim barnacles found on the wings of the missing plane could reveal exactly where it landed

• Barnacles found attached to washed-up plane debris could show what happened
• READ MORE: What happened to MH370? The theories nearly 10 years on

Scientists think they can finally reveal what happened to doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 – one of the biggest mysteries of our time – nearly a decade on. 

According to experts in Florida, the answer may be contained in the shells of little crustaceans called barnacles that attached themselves to bits of the plane’s debris.

Barnacle shells contain information about the different water temperatures they’ve been exposed to during their lifespan, they say in a new study. 

The academics think this information can help track back the movement of the crustaceans to where they first attached themselves to the debris – and in turn the place MH370 hit the water. 

Although no one knows exactly what happened to MH370, it’s widely believed the plane hit the Indian Ocean because of several bits of washed-up debris that were confirmed to have been part of the plane. 

On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and the 239 people on-board took off into the night’s sky from Kuala Lumpur, never to be seen or heard from again. The missing aircraft is pictured here in December 2011

Barnacle shells on parts of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that washed up can reveal more about what happened to the plane, experts say. Pictured, authorities stand near a piece of barnacle-covered plane debris (part of the wing known as a flaperon) in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, in this picture taken on July 29, 2015

MH370: What we know 

MH370 – a Boeing 777 – left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41am local time on March 8, destined for Beijing Capital International Airport. 

Crew last communicated with air traffic control 38 minutes after takeoff, around halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam. 

Minutes after, it is believed to have suddenly deviated westward from its planned flight path. 

Military radar tracked MH370 across the Malay Peninsular and over the Andaman Sea, before it left radar range 230 miles northwest of Penang Island. 

All 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard are presumed to have lost their lives when the plane somehow encountered problems.  

MH370 – a Boeing 777 commercial liner – vanished on March 8, 2014 after it took off from from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia on its way to Beijing.

All 239 people aboard are thought to have died shortly after the plane mysteriously veered westwards off course over the Andaman Sea in the Indian Ocean.

It spawned a huge multinational search effort – the most expensive search in the history of aviation at $200 million – that was controversially suspended in January 2017.

The new study was led by Gregory Herbert, an associate professor of evolutionary biology at the University of South Florida in the city of Tampa. 

He was inspired the moment he saw photographs of the plane debris that washed ashore Reunion Island off the coast of Africa a year after the crash. 

MH370’s flaperon – the flappy bit on the wing that helps stablise a plane during take off and landing – was found covered in barnacles.  

‘As soon as I saw that, I immediately began sending emails to the search investigators because I knew the geochemistry of their shells could provide clues to the crash location,’ Professor Herbert said. 

Barnacles and other shelled marine invertebrates grow their shells daily, producing internal layers similar to tree rings (which over time increase the girth of a trunk or branch). 

According to Professor Herbert, the chemistry of each layer of a barnacle shell is determined by the temperature of the surrounding water at the time the layer was formed. 

Therefore, knowledge of where the temperatures are higher and lower in the ocean can trace where they were as they grew. 

For the study, Professor Herbert and colleagues performed a lab-based growth experiment with live barnacles to unlock their temperature records from their shells. 

Barnacles growing in a controlled environment as part of a growth experiment for the study

MH370 – a Boeing 777 – left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41am local time on March 8, destined for Beijing Capital International Airport. Crew last communicated with air traffic control 38 minutes after takeoff, around halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam. Minutes after, it is believed to have suddenly deviated westward from its planned flight path. Military radar tracked MH370 across the Malay Peninsular and over the Andaman Sea, before it left radar range 230 miles northwest of Penang Island

Chemical secrets in barnacle shells reveal temperature history   

Chemical analysis of a barnacle shell involves using a drill with a dental burr to grind very small samples of the shell surface into powder. 

The shell is made of a mineral (calcium carbonate) that dissolves into a gas when placed in acid. 

That gas contains oxygen atoms that were part of the shell. 

The gas is run through a machine called a mass spectrometer that detects the abundance of oxygen-18 and oxygen-16 isotopes and calculates a ratio. 

This ratio tells experts the ocean temperature at the time the shell layer was formed by the barnacle. 

‘We grew Lepas barnacles in the lab at different constant temperatures over weeks and then chemically analysed the new shell layers that were grown in that time,’ he told MailOnline. 

‘We found that the shell chemistry is so predictable that we can tell what ocean temperature the barnacle was experiencing when it grew each sub-millimeter thick layer of shell.’ 

After the experiment, they applied the successful method to small barnacles that were taken from MH370. 

With help from experts at University of Galway in Ireland, they combined the barnacles’ water temperature records with oceanographic modeling to generate a simulation of where the plane’s debris drifted from. 

French scientist Joseph Poupin was one of the first biologists to examine the flaperon from MH370 that was found covered in barnacles. 

Poupin concluded that the largest barnacles attached were possibly old enough to have colonised on the wreckage very shortly after the crash and very close to the actual crash location where the plane is now.

Temperatures recorded in these largest shells could help investigators narrow their search, according to Professor Herbert. 

However, the new University of South Florida study, published in the journal AGU Advances, only used data from the flaperon’s smaller barnacles. 

Herbert’s research team did a growth experiment with live barnacles to read their chemistry. Pictured, the buoy used to collect barnacles to conduct the growth experiment for this study

READ MORE What happened to MH370? Here are the theories nearly a decade on  

The most persistent theory has centred on the pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah (pictured) 

 

‘Sadly, the largest and oldest barnacles have not yet been made available for research,’ Professor Herbert said. 

‘But with this study, we’ve proven this method can be applied to a barnacle that colonised on the debris shortly after the crash to reconstruct a complete drift path back to the crash origin.’ 

Until now, the search for MH370 spanned several thousands of miles along a north-south corridor deemed ‘the seventh arc’ where investigators believe the plane could have glided after running out of fuel. 

Because ocean temperatures can change rapidly along the arc, Professor Herbert thinks this method could reveal precisely where the plane is. 

Even if the plane is not on the arc, studying the oldest and largest barnacles can still narrow down the areas to search in the Indian Ocean. 

‘Investigators have good reason to believe that the plane is somewhere along the seventh arc,’ Professor Herbert told MailOnline. 

‘However, they’ve spent close to $200 million searching for it along the seventh arc since 2014 and have found nothing.

‘There’s currently no method or tool for finding the plane if it crashed away from the seventh arc, but our new method fill that need.’ 

The researchers think barnacles can provide clues that could revive the search for MH370 and finally provide answers for the bereaved families. 

Up to now, the search for MH370 spanned several thousands of miles along a north-south corridor deemed ‘the seventh arc’ (shown here) where investigators believe the plane could have glided after running out of fuel

The huge multinational search for MH370 was officially suspended in January 2017, which families of those lost slammed as ‘irresponsible’. 

A second search launched in January 2018 by private contractor Ocean Infinity ended without success after six months.

‘Knowing the tragic story behind the mystery motivated everyone involved in this project to get the data and have this work published, said study co-author Nassar Al-Qattan at University of South Florida. 

‘The plane disappeared more than nine years ago, and we all worked aiming to introduce a new approach to help resume the search, which might help bring some closure to the tens of families of those on the missing plane.’   

THE DOOMED MH370 FLIGHT 

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing after departing Kuala Lumpar International Airport on March 8 2014.

It was supposed to arrive later in Beijing, but fell out of contact just roughly an hour after take-off.

Authorities say the last words heard from the plane, either spoken by the pilot or co-pilot, were ‘Good night Malaysian three seven zero,’ according to the BBC.

Just minutes later, its transponder was shut down.

The jet was carrying 239 people including crew when it disappeared.

While it is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean, years of extensive hunting off Australia’s west coast have not yielded any sign of the plane.

All that has been found of the stricken jet is a few pieces of debris, washed up on beaches from the southern tip of South Africa to the east coast of Tanzania, 3,000 miles further north.

After a huge search operation yielded little in the way of concrete information about the disappearance of the jet, the hunt was abandoned in January 2017.

Search crews completed their deep-sea search of a desolate stretch of the Indian Ocean without finding a trace of the plane.

Since no technology currently exists that can tell investigators exactly where the plane is, that effectively means the most expensive, complex search in aviation history is over. 

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